^^ I get nothing, it just ignores that I just pasted the character. If I use the escape \xNN\xNN representation of the middle dot '\xc2\xb7', and try to convert to unicode, trying to show the dot causes the interpreter to throw an error:

1 Answer
1

unicode('\xc2\xb7') means to decode the byte string in question with the default codec, which is ascii -- and that of course fails (trying to set a different default encoding has never worked well, and in particular doesn't apply to "pasted literals" -- that would require a different setting anyway). You could use instead u'\xc2\xb7', and see:

>>> print(u'\xc2\xb7')
Â·

since those are two unicode characters of course. While:

>>> print(u'\uc2b7')
슷

gives you a single unicode character (of some oriental persuasion -- sorry, I'm ignorant about these things). BTW, neither of these is the "middle dot" you were looking for. Maybe you mean

>>> print('\xc2\xb7'.decode('utf8'))
·

which is the middle dot. BTW, for me (python 2.6.4 from python.org on a Mac Terminal.app):

Wow, if there's someone I want to answer a question about Python when I have one, it's Alex Martelli! Thank you! I own all of your Python books.
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Bjorn TiplingApr 27 '10 at 3:42

2

Hrm, all of that worked for me and cleared up some confusion I had on unicode vs utf-8, but I am still not able to paste a unicode character in the python interpreter on Mac Terminal.app. Neither can my co-worker when he uses the default apple shell, but he can with the port version of python I guess it is an application or clipboard issue.
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Bjorn TiplingApr 27 '10 at 4:05

2

u'\xc2\xb7' is not the same thing as '\xc2\xb7'.decode('utf8')/unicode('\xc2\xb7','UTF-8'). The former is a Unicode string of two code points (U+00C2 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX) and U+00B7 (MIDDLE DOT)), the latter evaluates to Unicode string with a single code point (U+00B7 (MIDDLE DOT); its UTF-8 encoding requires two bytes). u'\uc2b7' is (as illustrated) something completely different: U+C2B7 (HANGUL SYLLABLE SEUS).
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Chris JohnsenApr 27 '10 at 4:11

I think those are Korean characters (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They sound like 'sis'.
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polariseApr 18 '14 at 17:29